Virtual University Lectures

university lectures

(University lecturer) Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom,
lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by
academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise
research students, as well as teach.

virtual

Not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do
so

Almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict
definition

(virtually) in essence or effect but not in fact; "the strike virtually
paralyzed the city"; "I'm virtually broke"

virtual(a): being actually such in almost every respect; "a practical
failure"; "the once elegant temple lay in virtual ruin"

virtual university lectures - Human
Values

Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology (Center for the Study of
Language and Information Publication Lecture Notes)

Human values--including accountability,
privacy, autonomy, and respect for person--emerge from the computer systems that
we build and how we choose to use them. Yet, important questions on human values
and system design have remained largely unexplored. If human values are
controversial, then on what basis do some values override others in the design
of, for example, hardware, algorithms, and databases? Do users interact with
computer systems as social actors? If so, should designers of computer persona
and agents seek to build on such human tendencies, or check them? How have
design decisions in hospitals, research labs, and computer corporations
protected or degraded such values? This volume brings together leading
researchers and system designers who take up these questions, and
more.

IRMC Virtual Worlds Expo

On Thursday, April 23 and Friday, April 24,
2009, the Information Resources Management College hosted their annual Virtual
Worlds Expo at the National Defense Unversity.

Virtual World Factoid

Slide from lecture given by Professor Edward W.
Felten at Princeton Public Library on 2/20/2007

virtual university lectures

Aren't we actually sick of sex, of difference,
of emancipation, of culture? With this provocative taunt, the indomitable
sociologist Jean Baudrillard challenges us to face up to our deadly,
technologically empowered renunciation of mortality and subjectivity as he
grapples with the complex issues that define our postmillennial world. What does
the advent and proliferation of cloning mean for our sense of ourselves as human
beings? What does the turn of the millennium say about our relation to time and
history? What does the instantaneous, virtual realm of cyberspace do to reality?
In The Vital Illusion -- as always -- Baudrillard leads his readers to some
surprising conclusions.Baudrillard considers how human cloning -- as well as
the "cloning" of ideas and social identities -- heralds an end to sex and death
and the divagations of living by instituting a realm of the Same, beyond the
struggles of individuation. In this day and age when everything can be cloned,
simulated, programmed, and genetically and neurologically managed, humanity
shows itself unable to brave its own diversity, preferring instead to regress to
the pathological eternity of self-replicating cells. By reverting to our viral
origins as sexless immortal beings, we are, ironically, fulfilling a death wish,
putting an end to our own species as we know it. Next, Baudrillard explores
the "nonevent" that was and is the turn of the millennium. He provocatively puts
forward the thesis that the arrival of the year 2000 could never take place
because we could neither resolve nor leave behind our history, nor could we stop
counting down toward our future. For Baudrillard, the millennial clock reading
to the millionth of a second on its way to zero is the perfect symbol of our
time: history decays rather than progresses. In closing, Baudrillard examines
what he calls "the murder of the real" by the virtual. In a world of copies and
clones in which everything can be made present in an instant by technology, we
can no longer even speak of reality. Beyond Nietzsche's symbolic murder of God,
our virtual world free of referents is in the process of exterminating reality,
leaving no trace: "The corps(e) of the Real -- if there is any -- has not been
recovered, is nowhere to be found."Peppered with Baudrillard's signature
counterintuitive moves, prophetic visions, and dark humor, The Vital Illusion
exposes the contradictions that guide our contemporary culture and rule our
lives.